


My Shadow as Company

by elisewrites



Series: Better Unrequited [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Kissing, Angst and Feels, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Mutually Unrequited, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rio (Good Girls) Being an Asshole, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23074498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisewrites/pseuds/elisewrites
Summary: “Shame all my teachin’ had to go to waste,” he clucks, newly disinterested as he levels his gaze with hers again, and she expects him to smile again — expects him to grab hold of the knife in her chest and twist it just to hear her cry out — but he doesn’t. His expression is almost solemn — the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes carefully blank as if the inadvertent truth behind his words has just dawned on him, as if he truly thinks of her as wasted potential — and she feels the gash in her chest tear along every seam in her, the heavy weight of her grief and guilt and fear pouring out at his feet.She justbreaks.・・・Haunted, restless, and desperately seeking solace, Beth visits Annie at her work in the middle of the night. When Rio finds her there, she confronts him. Turns out neither of them have gotten any better at controlling their impulses.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: Better Unrequited [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764664
Comments: 22
Kudos: 108





	My Shadow as Company

**Author's Note:**

> note: this is a canon divergence that takes place after the bar scene in ep2, in which beth never lies about being pregnant. aka, i started writing this as a prediction fic about ep3 but rewriting took me over six hours, so here we are!  
> title is an excerpt from “The Current Isolationism” by Camille Rankine.  
> send me prompts, suggestions, theories, or just a hello @elise-jupiterstyle on tumblr!

Beth wakes with a gasp.

Her fingers are clenched in the sheets when she glances down at them, the remains of her nightmare still clawing at her subconscious mind as she slowly eases her grip.

She takes in her surroundings with bleary eyes, struggling to adjust to the vast darkness seeping from every corner of her room. She shuts her eyes again before balling her hands into fists, rubbing furiously at her lids as if it would reap any chance of erasing the hazy flashes of her dream that continue to dance behind them. She hasn’t gotten anywhere close to a full night’s sleep for the five days, and the consequences of it are rapidly catching up to her. Ever since Rio appeared in place of Rhea, bearing the cordial promise to take her life personally, there’s not one corner of the Earth that feels safe anymore; least of all, her own bedroom.

He’d been at the house last night, just watching her.

She’d gotten home from work late, had just started to trudge her way to the front door when she’d caught sight of him at the foot of her driveway. He’d been lurking near the bushes separating her house from the one adjacent, standing far enough away that he could almost be viewed as non-threatening. She’d frozen, feet cemented to the walkway, the soft jingle of the keys dangling from her fingers the only sound to permeate the deafening silence around them.

He didn’t go through with it. Rather, he rooted himself where he stood, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, seeming content to wait her out. It was only when her keychain slipped from her fingers, colliding boisterously with the concrete, that he’d broken out of his reverie, smirking lightly at her before stalking off in the direction he’d came from.

Beth still hadn’t adjusted to that — the cruelty that so heavily decorated every look and gesture of his that she used to revere. She’d had four months, give or take, to orient herself with the morbid reality of what she’d done — hell, she’s had the entirety of the year she’s known him to acquaint herself with the disparate patches of his personality — and still, she can’t stomach the fiendish delight he draws from watching her wilt away.

There was once a time, back when upending him still had its benefits, that she’d been able to whole-heartedly assure Ruby and Annie that he wouldn’t shoot her. Despite bleeding him of half his profits and knowing exactly how he handled being slighted, she’d been so confident that despite how far she pushed him, he wouldn’t do anything that would set him back in the business.

Now, as she recalls the image of him from five nights ago — the mirthful grin he’d flashed her as he’d assured her he’d be the one to kill her — she can’t fathom the version of him that had perpetually lowered his gun from her head. The visions of him that used to muddle her brain like novocaine and dominate her midnight fantasies have been replaced by the lone memory of his face that night; the coaxing promise in his tone that swore off the pattern of reluctant mercy he’d shown her since the very beginning.

She supposes that that’s the worst part — the waiting; the suspense; the not-knowing. It weighs down on her in greater volumes with every breath she takes, knowing that they’re soon to be her last. Being aware of the fact that her days are now numbered without having access to the countdown has made her waking hours almost as unbearable as her restless ones.

That’s what all this is for him, anyway: a biocidal mind game. He’ll have less difficulty isolating her when he’s ready to pull the trigger if she’s already halfway to doing so herself.

Despite the recent worsening of her nightmares, their occurrence isn’t anything that she’s unfamiliar with. They’d started way back when she’d first shot him, plaguing the unconscious parts of her mind as if the conscious ones weren’t already shrouded in heart-wrenching guilt.

The paranoia, however, is relatively new.

Sure, Beth’s heart rate might’ve picked up a fair amount if the topic of discussion briefly shifted to Rio when she was with Rhea. That was always the kind of adrenaline spike that stems from harboring a critical piece of information that can never be disclosed. During the past few nights, though, those brief peaks of apprehension have been replaced with a tenacious anxious spiral.

Every shadow climbing the walls of her home is his silhouette. Every bump in the night is the sound of his bullets hitting the countertop. Every man donned in black is him or one of his men, and every space she enters is polluted with a sense of dread knowing that he might be there, waiting until her guard is at its lowest before he returns the favor.

Even if Beth were able to sleep, she can’t say that she’d want to. It’s a much bigger risk to sleep with one eye open than not at all with both, and if that means suspending her waking state well into the early hours of the morning, waiting her own body out until it succumbs to the pull of exhaustion — well, there’s less of a chance that her mind will have the energy to conjure up its usual registry of nightmares.

Unfortunately for her, this method isn’t full-proof. There’ve been more than a dozen nights in the past few months where she’s woken up in a variety of different conditions — usually once the work week is done, and the thoughts that regularly accompany it begin to yield to the darker ones lurking on the sidelines —ranging from slightly unnerved to full-body tremors. And again, it’s not like this is anything new to her, but still — they’d gradually become less frequent the more she forced herself to accept what she’d done, committing herself to helping those she’d hurt in consequence of her actions, despite knowing the damage was already done.

With him being back, though, her mind has taken to coping with the shock by recalling the last memory it has of him. Gradually, the night has been returning to her in bits and pieces, the abrupt glimpses of it perpetually dousing her senses with panic so vicious, she’s started debating whether or not her current condition can even be considered living.

Those sort of thoughts were notably unwelcome and often alarming at first. The sort of thoughts that would slip beneath her pillow and chant whispers into her ear about how karma had finally come to collect its dues, that there was no escape in sight for her this time; that after all the harm she’s caused, it’d be in the best interest of those she loves most to meet her end complacently. The fallout from her reckless decisions now loomed over her head incessantly, entirely inevitable in a way that she’s never experienced — not even after the third time she’d had a gun pressed to her head.

Naturally, she reacts to the dark thoughts staining her sleepless nights by burying them deep into the back of her mind, feigning ignorance towards her morbid reality during the hours of nine to five. She gives a silent word of gratitude that she’s lived to see the sunrise; that she’ll be able to hug her kids, and tell each of them that she loves them so that they’ll never doubt it when she’s not around to say it anymore.

She’s fairly confident that Rio’s ulterior intention is something to this effect — to make up for all the times he passed on killing her when he had the chance to make it quick and painless, and to share with her the pain that Marcus went through during those stagnant months, not knowing if he’d ever hear his father’s voice again. To ensure she knows what’s it like to feel her life draining from her with each passing moment; to feel herself wilt away until there’s nothing left of her.

Beth had spent all those months in his absence asking herself what he would’ve done and now that he’s back, hers for the asking, it’s dawned on her how stupid that mentality had been. She knows him better than she’ll ever admit to herself because at one point or another, she longed to be like him. She envied the power and respect that he drew about him implicitly — yearned for the position of authority he’d been securing whilst she’d been sinking further into the dull background of a life that was no longer her own. She craved the type of life in which _she_ would tell others what to do because _she_ knew best — not the other way around.

In retrospect, she can see that he must’ve sensed it from very early on, if not the first day he met her — the part of her that was itching for a little chaos in a lifestyle that had no hope of breeding it. It was the part of her that no one else had ever looked close enough to pick up on. Beth loved to steal the floor of someone else’s show just as much as Rio loved to occupy a space where he didn’t belong. It’s obvious to her now that he played into that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she enjoyed having someone whose assumptions she could smother.

In the memory that’s tinted with vibrant shades of green, Beth recalls asking Rio if this was all a game to him. She can picture the slight quirk of his lips, can hear the brief huff of laughter he’d let out in response to her unnerved frustration — remembers how she replayed them both over and over in her mind for hours after the fact, trying to discern what the hell it all meant. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d stored the infuriating observation that he enjoyed watching her stumble after she’d been a bit too brazen for her own good.

With more than a little despondence, she’s begun to accept that she was just another piece to his chess game; another means to an end in flipping his game. In turn, she’s also come to realize that her gravest oversights have stemmed from the fact that for a little while, in her blissful little bubble of naivety, she’d let herself believe that she meant more to him than that. She knows she’d felt something for him — something strong enough that she was sure his feelings had to mirror her own — but in the end, she had to accept that the line they’d been toeing was too frail to withstand any more pressure. She knew that in his world — _their_ world — there was no jurisdiction for those who showed weakness. Leaving herself vulnerable to him, despite how badly she craved to do so, would only be granting him permission to destroy her.

She couldn’t let it happen — not for anyone ever again, and certainly not for Rio.

She supposes that she’s gotten what she wanted. Coming home to him looming on the other end of her lawn, his expression hard and apathetic as if being in her mere vicinity had dissolved any trace of emotion from him. He’d always kept his cards close to his chest, but it had never been like _this_.

She’d sensed the shift in him immediately. In her dissociative state of shock, she was only capable of observing him as her short-circuiting brain struggled to make sense of what her eyes were processing. She’d seen that shift in the way he’d leaned into her, his body much closer to hers than the occasion called for, as he’d laid the bullets out before her — felt it in the brush of his fingertips, sweeping across the skin of her temple in that achingly familiar gesture of his, in the mirth dancing behind his hooded eyelids as he regarded her with that cruel smirk tugging at his lips. Even in her state of stupefaction, Beth could clearly tell that any physical contact between them now only served him as an angle to outplay her with.

Now, Beth can feel the panic clawing its way up her ribcage, her erratic breaths filling up the hollow space of her darkened bedroom as she searches each corner for a threat that isn’t there. She flails her arm out to her bedside table, blindly patting at its surface until a soft yellow glow floods through the room and chases the shadows away.

Squinting, she chances a look at her alarm clock, groaning audibly when the jarring green numbers read 11:38 P.M.

She sits up further in bed as her breathing starts to even out, her back thumping against the headboard as she stares blankly ahead of her. The photos scattered atop her dresser stare back at her, the chaste faces of her children searing a hole straight through her aching heart.

She’s not sure how much longer she can go on like this.

Before her hazy state of consciousness can catch up with the movement of her limbs, Beth is sitting up and clambering out from beneath her comforter. The sheets slip from her legs as she slides them over the side of the mattress, her overheated skin simmering beneath the flimsy silk material of her pajamas. Her steps are staggered and clumsy as she strides towards her bathroom door, fumbling around in the dark for her robe. A moment later, her fingers brush over the fabric resting on the doorknob, and she swiftly slips her arms through the sleeves, draping the material over her shoulders before fastening the sash at her waist.

She makes her way to the bedroom door in a bit of a daze, stopping when she reaches it to give her bedroom a cursory once-over. Her eyes fall to her phone where it’s resting on the edge of her nightstand, and she ignores the fact that her fingers are trembling slightly when they close around it, gripping it in her palm just a little too tight. The memory that her mind begins to conjure up seems so surreal, like it took place in different lifetime, and its association is something that she doesn’t even try to wrap her head around now.

This isn’t a rare occasion, nowadays, either — the scattered episodes of reminiscence that creep forth from the darkest corners of her mind, where she thought she’d shut him away for good. The worst ones by far are always from that night — the one that, despite her meticulous effort, her subconscious mind can’t seem to move on from.

For now, Beth deals with it the same way she’s dealt with it for the past four months — she buries it, storing the intrusive thoughts atop the highest shelf in her mind to be dealt with at a later time. She slips her phone into the thin pocket of her pajama pants as she reaches for the door with her other hand, and it takes her a good three tries to turn the knob adequately with her trembling fingers.

She drifts through the house like a phantom, her socked feet muffling any audible trace of her presence, though it’s not as though her dreadfully empty house warrants the need for silent movement. Judith had fortunately offered to take the kids instead of setting up camp in their home for a change — of course, only after studiously pointing out to Beth how dark the circles beneath her eyes had become, her doting concern doing a poor job of masking the small digs she slipped in about maintaining a _realistic_ work schedule.

Regardless of Beth’s overt bitterness towards Judith’s overbearing approach to — well, everything, she knows that Judith draws her strength from feeling like she’s needed, expressing her affection in a way that best fulfills her own needs and, hell, Beth knows an opportunity when she sees one.

After the bar — and the dreadfully stagnant days that’d passed before Rio had begun his bi-nightly surveillance visits — Beth had been struck by the implicit urge to get her kids as far away from it all as possible. She figures that she placed him in a similar position when she’d broken into his loft, discovering only a short time after that he’d packed it all up in her wake.

Beth pads towards the front door, slipping on the pair of flats that lay next to it and snatching her car keys from the bowl a few steps behind her. She doesn’t even know where she intends on going — just knows that she needs to get out of the house, away from the lonely, foreboding tension that seems to follow her like the shadows clinging to the walls around her.

It’s only after she’s started her minivan and is pulling out of the driveway that she figures out where she wants to go. She turns the radio dial down until the music that drifts from the speakers is no more than a soft hum — enough to keep the silence of the car and her frantic thoughts at bay.

When she rolls up next to the stop sign resting on the last block of her street, she flips her blinker on and turns right.

Beth spots the translucent light illuminating the gas station from more than a mile down the road.

The tendrils of anxiety encasing her heart loosen just a fraction as she pulls into the desolate parking lot. It’s not surprising that it’s nearly desolate at this hour, the only two cars that occupy the lot being a silver pickup truck and a familiar blue sedan that could pass as a prop for a dystopian fiction film. The sight of it eases some of the tension in her shoulders, and her lips nearly form a smile as she pulls into the parking space closest to it.

Beth slips out of her car, reaching the front entrance of the dull brick building in a few quick strides. Her eyes immediately seek Annie out as she pushes the door open, the tinkle of a bell sounding above her head as she steps inside, leaving the door to fall shut behind her. Beth takes two steps before stalling completely, barely close enough to make out the vague details of the man standing opposite Annie at the counter, and her heart skips a few beats as her eyes scan over the black denim jacket covering his torso and the knit beanie pulled low over his ears.

Her blood thunders in her ears before she can process that their transaction has been completed, her defenses shooting up around her like barbed wire even though she can distantly hear her name fall from Annie’s mouth. And it’s instinctual — the way she braces herself, tension pulling at the muscles of her back and shoulders like her spine has been swapped for a steel rod, and she can’t even place what she’s bracing for, but there’s not another living soul for miles around this ghost land of a gas station, and the man turning towards her is —

A stranger. She’s never seen this man in her life, but he certainly isn’t Rio.

She clears her throat, the sound awkwardly bouncing off the grungy floor tiles in such a confined setting. The man’s eyes scan her only briefly, no doubt clocking her odd choice in attire before he’s nodding at her politely, sliding past her towards the door and strolling out into the night.

“Earth to Beth! What the hell are you doing here?”

Beth’s head snaps back to the front of the store at the sound of her name, her eyes falling to Annie where she stands behind the front counter. She’s pulled the strands of her platinum-brunette hair away from her face and into a low ponytail, her outfit a simple black ensemble consisting of a sweater and baggy, high-waisted jeans. It looks as though her arms were previously crossed over her chest, as one of her hands is still tucked beneath one arm while the other gestures aimlessly out in front of her, punctuating the question that Beth has left unanswered.

She approaches the counter silently, shrugging her shoulders in leu of an answer. Annie’s brows pinch together, concern coloring her tired features as she gives Beth a cursory once-over, ensuring that there’s nothing visibly off about her, and stupid, Beth thinks vaguely — all of her scars and open wounds are seated much deeper than the surface of her skin.

“Beth? Did something happen?” Annie tries again, seeking out an explanation that Beth doesn’t possess, and she turns her body so that she has eyes on her sister as well as the front of the store. At this point, she can’t even tell if she does it purposely or if it’s just instinctual.

“No,” she says finally, snapping out of her daze and attempting to inject some truth into the word. “No, just couldn’t sleep. That’s all.”

Annie nods hesitantly even as her eyes narrow a bit, the concern on her face easing but still clearly visible. She seems to wrap up whatever evaluation she’d been administering, though, dropping her elbows to the counter in front of her and supporting her chin with both hands.

“Oh- _kay_. Usually I just throw on a show and drink until I black out, but I won’t complain about having some company,” Annie jokes, and not for the first time, Beth finds herself thanking her last few lucky stars for her sister’s inherent ability to lighten the mood with a few flippantly-placed words.

“I guess I should be enjoying my TV before it’s the next thing to go,” Beth replies, cracking a smirk that she hopes is convincing. Annie sobers a bit at that, her expression reverting to something carefully cautious that nearly masks the worry that’s etched along the lines of her face.

“I mean, he didn’t ask for _all_ of it, right? We’ve still got a business to run,” she says, a hint of panic rearing beneath the frustration in her tone. Beth shrugs her shoulders, pushing a hip against the counter as her gaze wanders across the grungy white shelves taking up the interior of the station.

“He hasn’t asked for any of it. Yet,” Beth responds, emphasizing the verbal asterisk with a little more bitterness than she’d intended. Annie reels back, and Beth can see the plethora of questions building on her tongue before Annie’s gaze jumps to something over Beth’s shoulder. Her gaze narrows on whatever it is she’s spotted behind Beth, her brows furrowing in confusion before a stark look of recognition dawns on her features, followed by a look that’s morphed between alarm and fear. Beth follows her line of sight a second later, twisting her head around so that she can see the front of the store.

That’s when she sees him.

Beyond the double doors of the gas station’s front end, there’s now a black G-wagon parked beside the gas pump closest to the building — and Rio, leaning back casually against the front end of it.

She hears Annie splutter a bit behind her, inhaling a few rapid breaths as words fail to form on her tongue, but Beth’s gaze is tethered to him, staring him down from across the lot, and it feels a lot like she’s witnessing a car in the midst of crashing. Inexplicably, despite every part of her that urges her to tear her gaze away, she finds that she can’t.

Frankly, she doesn’t want to go out there — would prefer to shield herself with the cover of the brightly lit store and the company of her sister, whom she’s supposed to strong for even if she doesn’t feel it— but then she sees that _goddamn_ _smirk_ pulling at the edge of his lips, can just barely make it out from across the lot, and she’s pushing off the counter before she can even process that she’s made a decision. She vaguely registers the sound of Annie’s voice as she calls after her, probably wondering if she’s finally lost it, but Beth throws a curt, “Stay here,” over her shoulder before pushing both doors open and charging out into the freezing air.

In an effort to push down the fear slowly clawing its way up her throat, she allows her frustration and anger to boil to the surface, loosening the reigns on them as she nears him and sees that his smirk has only grown with clear satisfaction. She keeps her eyes locked on his, every nerve ending in her buzzing to life when his eyes drop lazily to rake over the length of her body because she _knows_ that it means nothing to him — that the glimpses of affection that were once genuine are now void of emotion, used by him as a mere manipulation tactic to remind her of what they used to have. To remind her that he knows her — knows her desires, fears, weaknesses — and won’t hesitate to take full advantage of it if it’ll give him a leg up on her.

He wants her to feel as compromised as he did when she took his gun from him and shot him with it.

She definitely preferred being ghosted.

When Rio would close himself off, she knew, at the very least, where they stood with one another. When he’d rebuilt his walls so that she’d be left on the outside — when he’d left her to freeze as the feds were closing in, deliberately pushing her away with such a simplistic yet cutting string of words — there were no illusions about what was and what wasn’t. Now, she can say in full confidence that his deceitful displays of affection cut far deeper than any words of malice he could ever spew at her. After all, the only thing worse than a broken heart is hope.

All of these scornful thoughts bubble to the surface in time with her stifled hostility as she strides furiously across the parking lot, leaving an exceptionally wide berth between them when she grinds to a halt in front of him. _God_ , just the thought of having to hear him speak, of having to figure out yet another puzzle he’s laid out in front of her has a fresh wave of exhaustion settling over her shoulders like a thick blanket, reminding her of how long it’s been since she’s been able to properly sleep through the night.

His eyes wander up to hers at a leisurely pace, amusement dancing behind the dark hue of them as his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Beth steels herself.

“What the hell do you want?” Beth asks, a little shocked by how brazen the words sound when they leave her mouth, but it only appears to amuse Rio further — and right, Beth thinks: this is all a twisted game to him, just like she’d guessed a million years ago.

He sucks his lower lip into his mouth in a pitiful attempt to smother his grin, and something in her chest tears a little at how much _joy_ he seems to derive from her current strait.

“Nothin’,” he replies, his tone so pointedly casual that she has to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to keep from throttling him. “Just makin’ my rounds. You know, checkin’ in on associates and whatnot.”

He pulls a hand from the pocket of his jacket as he says it, rolling it out loosely at the wrist, adding some sort of unspoken substance to the remarkably useless answer he’s given her. She pops an eyebrow at him, crossing her arms over her chest, and she knows that her attire certainly isn’t earning her any points for intimidation but she’s just so fed up with this whole sadistic charade that she can’t find it in herself to be insecure about it.

“In the parking lot of a gas station, a quarter past midnight?” Beth questions snidely, adding more bite to her words than she’s dared to during any of their recent encounters. Regardless, Rio remains infuriatingly indifferent to it, his eyes tracing over her features with covert hostility as his lips quirk back up into a grin.

“Can’t have anybody gettin’ too comfortable.”

Beth wishes her reaction wasn’t so obvious, but it’s clear that he’s picked up on the way her shoulders tense even further, her arms tightening against her chest as the cool air whips around her. Despite the long navy coat she’d managed to shrug on as she fled her house, the temperature is still borderline frigid, and she kind of hates how unbothered he is by it, a navy blue beanie pulled down over his ears and a black wool coat wrapped snugly around his torso. He looks like he could stay out here all night, hashing out irrelevant details and feeding her vague non-answers that tell her nothing about his true intentions.

Somehow, she figures that he knows that this is her own personal hell — not the impending threat of her early demise, but the suspense of being hunted by a predator who knows precisely when and where will be the easiest to strike before even she does.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want?” Beth spits out, tightening her arms around her torso.

Rio’s gaze roves over her body once more, but it isn’t appraising or salacious like it had been minutes before. It’s like he’s sizing her up, scrutinizing her with an air of pointed disinterest.

“You ain’t got nothin’ I want no more,” he says, his tone more genuine than she thinks she’s ever heard it, and she feels that little tear in her chest rip another couple of inches. The air thickens in the wake of his words, the silence between them loaded as her bitterness rises in her throat like bile, and it’s obvious that Rio had been anticipating such a reaction when he opens his mouth a moment later, delivering the final blow.

“Shame all my teachin’ had to go to waste,” he clucks, newly disinterested as he levels his gaze with hers again, and she expects him to smile again — expects him to grab hold of the knife in her chest and twist it just to hear her cry out — but he doesn’t. His expression is almost solemn — the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes carefully blank as if the inadvertent truth behind his words has just dawned on him, as if he truly thinks of her as wasted potential — and she feels the gash in her chest tear along every seam in her, the heavy weight of her grief and guilt and fear pouring out at his feet.

She just _breaks_.

“ _Get on with it_ , then!” Beth shouts, taking a subconscious step towards him, and she sees it — the genuine shock at her outburst in the widening of his eyes and the clench of his jaw just before he shifts his mask back into place.

She can feel the tears of her frustration brimming at her eyelids, but she doesn’t give him the chance to fit a word in edgewise.

“Put that dented bullet to use if I’m so worthless! We _both_ know it’s bad for business to leave loose ends _untied_ ,” she pushes, her bitter tone laced with so much malice, it could cut right through him like barbed wire if she were any closer. She takes another step forward, dropping her arms to her sides — yielding her last defense.

Rio’s demeanor shifts discernibly then, his shoulders tensing and the muscles in his jaw working so hard she thinks he might crack a molar. He pushes off the hood of his car, stealing back his height advantage now that he’s standing up straight, but Beth doesn’t so much as falter as her gaze drills into his.

“You think you gon’ call my bluff or somethin’? ‘Cause let me tell you, mama, the second I get a little heat off my back, you the first one I’m comin’ for,” he hisses, his voice low and dangerous to match the fire in his dark eyes. He takes a step forwards, advancing on her with an air of righteous fury that wasn’t there a minute ago, and she marvels, briefly, at the sight of his true emotions creeping out from beneath his mask.

Beth doesn’t back down, tilting her chin up at him stubbornly and for the first time since he crashed back into her life, she realizes that she’s got the upper hand. He’s not even aware that he’s shown his vulnerability to her, but now —

Now, she knows exactly how to get under his skin.

“From where I’m standing, now would be the perfect time. So go ahead,” she insists, her tone imbued with such faux sweetness that she could be encouraging one of her children to spread icing over a cookie. It hits its target dead-on, his nostrils flaring as he bristles with barely-restrained rage and for a brief instant, she thinks he might hit her.

Maybe, she considers fleetingly, she’d be okay with it if he did. Maybe somewhere deep down, entangled with her grief and guilt and ever-fucking-present exhaustion, she thinks that she kind of wants him to. She’d certainly prefer it over the light-hearted affection he’s taken to fabricating.

At least if he struck her, there’d be no dishonesty behind it.

Rio takes another step towards her, his body closer to hers than it’s been since that night at the bar. She stares into his dark eyes, refusing to falter before him, wanting — no, _needing —_ him to believe how serious she is about this.

She can’t handle the mind games anymore. She can’t handle the waiting.

And it’s as if he’s read her mind, or maybe he’s finally _heard_ her, because the words that leave his mouth next are deliberately cutting, spilling from his lips in a rough tone like a poison tonic crafted to make her wither.

“Endin’ you right now would be givin’ you the easy out, and you ain’t deservin’ of it, darlin’,” he purrs, his lower lip pouting like he feels sorry to say it, and despite how strongly her body wants to flinch back from him, Beth refuses to give up just yet.

There may be some truth to what he’s saying, she doesn’t doubt that, but if his true intention is to torture her, she at least has to find out why.

“Do you ever get tired of lying to yourself?” Beth murmurs, an odd sense of calm washing over her as she watches her words push him closer and closer to his breaking point. And _good,_ she thinks, because she’s sure as hell past hers.

He clenches his jaw, _hard,_ the muscles pushing up against the tan skin wrapped around the bone, and she swears she hears a growl tear its way up his throat before he’s moving in on her. He wraps a hand around her elbow, the pads of his fingers digging into the sensitive skin there as he strides away from his car, tugging her along with him. His grip isn’t painful — she figures she could break free from it with a good yank of her arm — but she doesn’t fight him as he drags her over to the dim area alongside the brick exterior of the store, straining to keep up with his long, furious strides.

She considers, briefly, that she should be terrified — hell, she should be calling out for Annie, tearing her arm from his grip, and getting the hell away from him. She certainly shouldn’t be allowing the one person who has a vendetta against her to lure her away from any possible witnesses, but in this moment, all she can focus on is how warm his skin feels against hers despite the cold air whipping past their bodies.

He practically rips his hand from her as soon as they’re tucked beneath the shadowy veil of the building, and she tries her damndest not to let it get to her. He crowds her back against the brick wall, his dark eyes piercing into hers with more fury than she thinks she’s ever seen in them. It makes her instinctively shrink back into the wall a fraction, but she holds his gaze, jerking her chin up at him and trying to counteract how incredibly small she feels.

He breaks his gaze from hers for a moment as he collects himself, wetting his lips as he wavers where he stands, and the air between them feels thick enough to choke her.

“You still think you’re somethin’ special?” Rio grinds out, voice rough and splintered as his gaze returns to hers, and Beth shifts her weight, squaring her shoulders as apprehension prickles at the base of her neck. “Think this is all some fuckin’ game you can win by sayin’ shit you know nothin’ about an’ pissin’ people off to buy your sorry ass more time?”

“All you _fucking do_ is _play games_!” Beth shrieks, her voice tearing her throat as she chokes on a cynical laugh. “Turner is _dead_ and he’s an _FBI agent_ , for god’s sake! If you wanted the same for me, you’d have done it already, so cut the shit _for_ _once_!”

Her chest is heaving by the end of her spiel, her throat aching from the tenor of her voice, and maybe she’d be a little more shocked at her own boldness if she weren’t so captivated by the intensity of Rio’s gaze. His eyes flit between her own before dropping to her parted lips, lingering on them a moment before dipping even lower,and her breaths are still coming and going in short bursts as she struggles to regain control over her breathing. For a moment, she considers spitting more venom at him, or pushing at his chest because there’s practically no space left between them now, because she can smell him — can smell the mix of expensive cologne and cedar and something extra that, despite the never-ending list of reasons why she shouldn’t be able to pick up on it, still makes her feel warm and comforted; something distinctly _him_ that somehow feels like home.

Rio is silent for a long time — long enough that Beth starts to debate whether he’s really going to do it — if he’s working out the details in that mind of his that never shuts off; if he’s going to make good on his promise just to spite everything she’s thrown at him tonight — that maybe he’s finally realized that he’s had enough of her. He’s silent for long enough that her breathing finally begins to even out and she sags back against the brick wall, suddenly so incredibly drained, allowing the building to hold her weight because she’s always just _so tired._

She attempts to refocus on him instead of the scent of him that’s still shrouding her clarity, and when she finds that his eyes are locked with hers again, she immediately knows he’s seen it — still _is_ seeing every thought playing out across her face, and she curses herself because she’s shown him weakness, has laid her vulnerabilities out for him to pick bare, and she waits for the next cutting remark, or a cruel interpretation of the affection he once held for her that she left to wither and die — but it never comes.

Instead, he’s reaching out for her now, dropping one hand to her hip while the other reaches out for her jaw, and she’s having trouble processing his touch, her brain practically short-circuiting as it tries to work out what ploy he’s enacting this time. And she knows she should be shrinking back — should be batting his hands away, shouldn’t be allowing his hands anywhere near her, never mind _wanting_ them on her — but she finds herself gradually melting into his touch, her body curving away from the wall and into him, and there’s no time to process that either before Rio is crashing his lips onto hers.

He wastes no time in parting the seam of her lips with his tongue, exploring her mouth greedily before biting down, _hard,_ on her lower lip. The noise that escapes her is something between a gasp and a whimper, muffled by his mouth on hers, and the hand on her hip tightens until she’s sure she’ll have a light pattern of bruises there come sunrise. The kiss isn’t kind or affectionate by any stretch of the imagination, and Beth finds that she prefers it that way — prefers the raw honesty of the fury he pours into it over any tenderness because this, she realizes with a heavy heart, is the one morsel of truth she’s been able to draw from him since she put three bullets in his chest.

His lips slant and glide over hers feverishly, taking more and more from her without remorse, and she thinks she likes that, too. All of the animosity and broken trust that had thus far held them at a distance from one another now acts as a bridge between them. And she knows that this is a mistake; knows that it’ll only make their situation more complicated — knows it just as well as she had when she’d seduced him in the bar, or when she’d invited him into her bed for all the wrong, self-serving reasons; when she’d believed she could rid herself of him by pulling something drastic enough to get herself killed — but she also knows that she wants to go out knowing that she was finally able to take what she wanted from life. She wants to be able to say that her life, if only for the last part of it, was lived just as much for herself as it was for others.

Rio’s hips push up against her own as he pins her against the bricks with the full length of his body, and it takes everything in her to swallow the moan rising in her throat as the hard lines of him slot perfectly with the soft curves of her.

She takes his bottom lip between her own, mirroring what he’d done a few moments prior, and she relishes in the groan it draws from his chest. She bites down harder, holding his lips in the trap of her teeth until she vaguely registers the taste of copper on her tongue, but she doesn’t think that either of them care as his tongue darts out to swipe across her top lip. The sensation of it has her nerve endings sparking and she releases his lip from between her teeth with a gasp.

Her hand glides from where it had been resting against his forearm to his bicep, squeezing at the hard muscle through the layers of clothing that cover it, and her head nearly knocks back against the bricks as his kisses grow more fierce. His touch feels discernibly predatory when his tongue invades her mouth again, fighting with her own in a perpetual battle for dominance. Her hand leaves his bicep as she sinks further and further into the kiss, climbing up his shoulder until she’s digging her nails into the nape of his neck. The noise that tears from his throat as she does so is something distinctly primal, and the knot that had been gradually tightening in her stomach sinks much lower as the sound vibrates against her lips.

They’re both panting into the other’s mouth now, desperately trying to get closer even though there’s no space left between them and, distantly, it occurs to Beth that if they keep going, if they go _there_ again, it’ll leave them both with nothing but pain. The thought is fleeting, though, because somewhere in the midst of his calloused hands dipping beneath the silk of her pajama top and his denim-covered thigh pressing up roughly between her own, she thinks she’d gladly let him hurt her — beg him to, even, if it meant she’d be purged of the guilt sitting heavily upon her chest. It threatens to suffocate her every time she so much as thinks of him, or Marcus, or Rhea, or any other extent of the damage she’s caused in the time that she’s known him — the damage she’s inflicted by wanting him, despite _everything,_ over and over again.

His hands are moving faster now, setting every inch of her skin on fire as he runs them over the curves of her waist. His thumbs brush against the bottoms of her bare breasts as his hands skim over her ribs, and if it’s even possible, he pulls her in closer, increasing the pressure of his thigh between her legs so that she can feel the rough fabric of his jeans through the thin silk of her pants. She keens, the noise stifled by his mouth as his tongue invades hers again, and the heat that had been steadily pooling low in her abdomen now bursts between her thighs, shooting sparks of heat through every nerve in her body.

Their combined movements are so impatient now, so desperate that her mind can barely keep up with them — with his feverish touch, with the sensation of his body against hers, with the movement of her own hands, and she barely realizes that one of them has dropped to palm at him through his jeans as he squeezes one of her breasts roughly because _god,_ she’d _missed him_ — and it takes her a moment to process what’s happening when he abruptly tears his mouth from hers.

The warmth of his touch fades in the next instant as he hastily pulls his hands out from beneath her top, leaving her cold and barren and vulnerable, and she bites her tongue on asking what’s wrong because there’s nothing _right_ about _any_ of this. She was fully aware that this would end badly for both of them, and she won’t allow herself to pretend like she wasn’t.

When she blinks her eyes open, he’s angled away from her slightly, his shoulder facing her as he scrubs a furious hand over his jaw, and she shuns the dull throb that starts in her chest when he refuses to meet her gaze. She tells herself that she knew this would happen — he’d said it himself: they both know how this will end, and she hasn’t reserved the right to feel any remorse over that. For once, she has to own up to her poor decisions and bear the repercussions.

Beth folds her arms over her chest as she sags back against the wall, turning her gaze to the sky as she attempts to get a grip on her racing heart. Her mind is still trying to catch up with it, to process the sensation of him that still lingers on every inch of skin he came into contact with. Every nerve is buzzing like an exposed live wire, electricity sparking and popping at her fingertips as she digs them roughly into the skin of her arms. She waits for him to say something, anything, watching as his expression twists more and more with each passing second, like he can’t quite believe what he’s done, either, and it’s the single outlying emotion that she can read on him in this moment. Beyond the regret, she’s got no clue as to what’s going on in his head right now, and she thinks there’s nothing that scares her more than that.

When Rio finally glances back up at her, his pupils are blown wide, nearly swallowing up the deep brown of his irises, and she can’t put a name to the way he’s looking at her — his brows furrowed, lips parted and curved downward, his eyes wide and bewildered — but it’s strikingly similar to the expression he wore when he’d chewed her out in that alley for being so incredibly ignorant, for disregarding his warnings; for putting herself in harms way, and she hasn’t the slightest clue what she’s supposed to make of that look now.

She waits for him to offer up some semblance of a rebuttal to what they’ve just done — maybe an accusation or another semi-empty threat, but he just stares at her, his gaze growing darker with each moment that passes in silence, and Beth can’t place why she does it when she raises three shaking fingers to her lips, brushing against the skin that’s been bitten raw.

Rio’s eyes automatically lower to clock the movement before he seems to break out of his reverie, cursing beneath his breath as he staggers back a step. Beth remains stagnant against the wall with her fingers pressed against her bottom lip, and she knows without a doubt that he’s going to leave now — knows that despite all the ways he’s proven himself to be courageous, to be capable of _handling_ everything _,_ he’ll continue to run from her if it means he doesn’t have to confront the inevitability of this thing between them. They’ll both go back to pretending like they’d never torn down this wall between them in the first place. He’ll slip back into the shadows, she’ll go back to living in fear, and they’ll both pretend this never happened, right up until the moment that he ends it. He’ll take her life, rid himself of her baggage, and rebuild his empire as if he’d never even left it.

She’s just work to him, after all, and now it’s back to business as usual.

As Beth stands opposite Rio, observing him as he slips further into his daze, his thoughts at war with one another, she thinks that maybe her own thoughts should upset her more. She wonders if she should be fighting harder for her life, or coming up with her next ground-breaking spiel to convince him that she’s worth keeping alive, but in this moment, she just feels weary. All she wants to do is rest, and she has full confidence that he’s willing to at least grant her that.

The strange thing is that when she meets his eyes again, her gaze disconnected and hard, there’s less contempt in his expression than she’d expected to find. It’s still there, almost always is now, simmering just beneath his surface, but she barely notices it because he just looks so — and she must be mistaken, because even _thinking_ it feels ridiculous, but he’s — he’s almost —

He’s _hurt_.

There’s pain etched into the creases of his forehead, into the lines around his eyes as he squints slightly, in the pull of his lips where they’re curved into a grimace, and that’s just — well, then she just hurts, too.

He’s looking at her with something close to apprehension, holding himself like he’s singed, like the ghost of her touch still burns him —like he truly hadn’t expected for this to go down in the direction that it had. She can sense the rage boiling beneath his guard, and as much as he’d probably like her to believe that it’s all directed at her, she gets the sense that he’s primarily angry with himself.

His lips part as he glances down at her fleetingly, and she foolishly hopes that she’s going to get something, _anything_ , out of him before he builds his walls back up again. Her wish is in vain, of course, as he clamps his mouth shut after a few unprosperous attempts at pushing the words from his tongue. Then, as his jaw works furiously and his eyes studiously avoid her own, he strides off in the opposite direction, away from her, with a raddled shake of his head, leaving her slumped against the cold brick wall.

When he reaches it, Rio yanks his car door open with an unnerving amount of force. He casts a fleeting, troubled glance around the gas station, his eyes momentarily meeting hers with a look she can’t name before he’s climbing into the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut.

She only registers a flash of red and the hum of an engine before he’s gone.

With a forlorn and aching heart, Beth sinks against the wall, completely indifferent to the bricks that claw at her skin through the thin material of her top. When her body meets the frigid concrete beneath her, she pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her trembling arms around them in a pitiful attempt to hold the splintering pieces of her together.

She figures she’ll start crying, or hyperventilating, or possibly a mixture of both, but the tears never come. Her shaky inhales are steady as she turns her head to the side and settles her cheek atop her knees, the ache in her chest steadily growing heavier and heavier with each passing second, but she doesn’t shed a tear. The pressure builds there, occupying the space around her heart until it’s all she can feel — that, and the overwhelmingly hollow sensation that burns more with every breath she takes.

At some point or other, Beth hears her name being called. She thinks it’s Annie’s voice, and she knows that she should respond, but she finds that she can’t. She counts her breathing — her exhales somehow trembling and remarkably even — as Annie approaches her, asking her questions that she doesn’t have the answer to.

It’s like she’s underwater, the sound of her sister’s voice muffled in her ears, and she relents to the water’s current, allowing herself to be pulled under by it. Her eyelids grow heavier with each breath that she counts and when they start to fall, she doesn’t bother to fight it. She allows them to drift shut and prays that she won’t think of him.

She’s just so _tired_.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so maybe i jumped the gun on my prediction about rio dragging out beth's murder b/c he literally intended the exact opposite BUT let's go with the naive assumption that he's just biding his time cause he's in his feels, cool? cool.  
> i was really not prepared for the pregnancy bomb, btw. i went to bed at one a.m. last sunday.


End file.
